Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government won’t step down because of the weeklong protests in Istanbul, which spread to at least 10 other cities — including Ankara, the capital of the country. The protests began on Monday, May 27, as an innocent demonstration of 500 people in Istanbul to oppose a construction plan to replace a park at Taksim Square with an Ottoman artillery barracks that was originally built in 1780 and destroyed in 1940.

It’s too early to come to a conclusion as to how these events might impact the ballot box. Today’s issue, however, is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not seem to understand the message coming from the streets, and is attempting to paint himself as a victim once again — this time as a result of the good service he says he is providing the public.

“I am saying this very openly and clearly,” he said Sunday. “We won’t allow a few street bandits to go to that square and provoke our people with misinformation. When this nation cast its vote for us, it did so for us to reclaim our history.” Erdogan also said, “The CHP’s [Republican People’s Party’s] mindset demolished that Ottoman artillery barracks built in 1780 during [Ottoman Sultan] Selim III and built a stadium there. We will rebuild that historic barracks there.”

A few facts: When people brought the AKP government to power in November 2002, they cast their votes in protest of the mainstream political parties that had brought Turkey into severe economic crisis; people wanted to give something new a chance. In the following two elections, the Erdogan government probably continued to win due to its economic success, and because the opposition parties continued to fail to convince the people that they could do a better job once in power. Invoking Ottomanism is all about Erdogan’s personal vision, but there is no data — except for the prime minister’s word — that people voted for the AKP to reawaken the Ottoman era.